Rebecca  Harding  Davis 


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.-'<'■  \ 


QUALLA 
By  Rebecca  Harding  Davis 


>^^  ix-^^^i^ 


Lippinoott*s 
Nov. 1875 


of  tfte 

^nibersiitp  of  Motti)  Carolina 


Collection  of  i^ortl)  Caroliniana 

Cnbotueb  bv 

loljn  ^prunt  ?|ill 

of  the  Class  of  1889 


V 


0,0'i  -  iSSLloy 


iT 


(fi^.fsr^ 


OUALLA. 


WHATEVER  else  you  leave  un- 
done, see  Oualla,"  urged  the 
friend  who  had  persuaded  us  to  an  ex- 
ploration of  the  North  Carolinian  moun- 
tains as  he  helped  us  aboard  the  train 
in  Philadelphia.  "Ride  over  some  day 
to  Casher's  Valley :  you'll  find  gigantic 
bluffs  there  ;  and  to  Waynesville  :  it  is 
the  highest  town  in  the  United  States. 
And  don't  forget  the  gorge  of  the  Unaka 
Range — eighty  peaks  above  six  thousand 
feet  in  sight  at  once.  But,  above  all, 
see  Oualla— see  Oualla  !" 

Now,  this  "riding  over,"  so  jauntily 
hinted  at,  had  turned  out  to  be  not  the 
gallop  of  an  hour  or  two,  as  we  supposed, 
but  slow  journeys  of  hundreds  of  miles 
along  mountain-roads,  made  on  mules 
or  the  sure-footed  Canadian  ponies  in 
use  among  the  mountaineers.  Half  the 
summer  passed  before  we  remembered 
Qualla.  It  was  very  easy  to  forget  any 
duty,  or  even  pleasure,  among  these  hills. 
We  had  corne  into  the  land  of  forget- 
ting. Railroads,  telegraphs,  work,  hurry 
of  every  sort,  we  had  left  behind  us  at 
the  first  pass.  Taking  the  little  town  of 
Asheville  as  our  head-quarters,  and  leav- 
ing all  baggage  and  encumbrances  there, 
we  journeyed  leisurely  from  one  great 
mountain-range  to  another — the  Cowee, 
Nantahela,  Balsam,  Blue  Ridge — the 
region  where  the  Appalachian  chain 
reaches  its  loftiest  height  on  the  conti- 
nent ;  halting  sometimes  in  a  gorge  where 
a  glitteringtrout-stream  proved  too  tempt- 
ing to  our  fishermen,  sometimes  in  a 
drowsy,    dirty   little   hamlet    above   the 


clouds  ;  or  camping  far  in  the  forests  in 
hopes  of  bringing  down  some  of  the 
wary  black  bears  that  lurked  in  their 
thickets.  Woods  and  gorges  as  well 
as  mountain-hamlet  were  drowsy :  the 
whole  region  wore  the  same  curious  air 
of  calmness,  of  content,  of  utter  indiffer- 
ence to  any  uneasy  goings  -  on  in  the 
world  below.  The  very  sunshine  in 
these  heights  was  not  energetic — never 
apparently  saw  any  necessity,  as  in  town, 
for  a  hurry  of  heat.  There  was  always 
a  tranquil  gray  chill  in  it,  as  in  early 
November  days  at  the  North ;  always 
vast  masses  of  mist  moving  somewhere 
in  sight  ready  to  break  on  you  in  fine 
summer  rain — a  rain  which  at  evening 
melted  away  into  a  universal  sparkle  from 
horizon  to  horizon,  and  a  soft  green  shiv- 
er of  leaves,  and  rainbows  arching  over 
peaks  that  rose  like  dim  gateways  in  the 
far  heaven.  The  guide  was  anxious  to 
tell  you  that  these  peaks  were  Pisgah  or 
Clingman's  Dome  or  the  Black  Brothers, 
but  you  were  apt  to  remember  how  Bun- 
yan  or  Christian  long  ago  had  come  into 
a  place  like  this  and  caught  a  glimpse 
of  the  heavenly  hills,  and  were  quite  sure 
these  were  no  Black  Brothers. 

There  was  a  certain  monotony  of  som- 
bre grandeur  in  the  scenery  that  had  its 
tranquillizing  influence,  and  made  a  great 
gulf  of  time,  as  it  were,  between  this  and 
our  ordinary  life.  For  days  together  we 
traversed  narrow  paths  with  bare  cliffs 
on  either  side,  or  passed  through  inter- 
minable chains  of  lower  hills  white  with 
chestnut  blooms,  or,  rising  to  the  cold 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill 


http://www.archive.org/details/quallaOOdavi 


I875-] 


QUALLA. 


57- 


high  levels,  climbed  giddy  steeps  where 
the  black  balsam  was  the  only  tree,  and 
no  birds  were  found  except  the  eagle 
and  the  little  snow-bird  of  the  North, 
which  summers  in  this  chilly  air. 

The  mountaineers,  with  their  clear- 
cut  Huguenot  faces  and  incredibly  dirty 
clothes,  nodded  like  old  friends  when 
we  passed  them  on  the  hill-paths,  but 
did  not  trouble  themselves  to  ask  any 
questions.  We  did  not  need  to  ask  any 
of  them.  Their  lives  were  open  before 
us.  There  were  the  unlighted  log  huts, 
split  into  halves  by  an  open  passage-way, 
and  swarming  with  children,  who  lived 
on  hominy  and  corn-bread,  with  a  chance 
opossum  now  and  then  as  a  relish.  They 
were  not  cumbered  with  dishes,  knives, 
forks,  beds  or  any  other. impedimenta  of 
civilization  :  they  slept  in  hollow  logs  or 
in  a'  hole  filled  with  straw  under  loose 
boards  of  the  floor.  But  they  were  con- 
tented and  good-natured  :  they  took  life, 
leaky  roof,  opossum  and  all,  as  a  huge 
joke,  and  were  honest  gentlefolk  des- 
pite their  dirty  and  bedless  condition. 
At  long  intervals  they  drove  the  steer 
which  was  their  sole  live-stock,  loaded 
with  peltry  or  corn,  down  to  one  of  the 
litile  villages  where  trade  was  carried  on 
without  money.  Money,  indeed,  appear- 
ed throughout  this  region  to  be  one  of 
the  unknown  luxuries  of  civilization  ;  and 
it  is  startling  (if  anything  could  be  start- 
ling up  yonder)  to  find  how  easily  and 
comfortably  life  resolves  itself  to  its  prim- 
itive conditions  without  it.  In  these  vil- 
lages we  found  thoroughbred  men  and 
women,  clothed  in  homespun  of  their 
own  making,  reading  their  old  shelves  of 
standard  books:  they  were  cheerful  and 
gay,  full  of  shrewd  common  sense  and 
feeling,  but  utterly  ignorant  of  all  the 
comforts  which  have  grown  into  neces- 
sities to  people  in  cities,  and  of  all  cur- 
rent changes  in  the  modern  world  of 
art,  literature  or  society;  in  fact,  almost 
unconscious  that  there  was  such  a  world. 
Among  the  mountain  -  woodsmen  we 
found  other  men  and  women  who  had 
never  learned  the  use  of  a  glass  window, 
or  of  a  cup  and  saucer,  and  manifestly 
never  had  learned  to  keep  themselves 
clean  ;  yet  they  were  of  honorable,  de- 


vout habits  of  mind,  and  bore  them- 
selves with  exceptional  tact  and  delicacy 
of  feeling  and  the  dignity  and  repose  of 
manner  of  Indians.  Palpable  facts  like 
these  were  calculated  to  shake  the  old 
notions  of  busy,  money -making  Phil- 
adelphians.  After  all,  were  Chestnut 
street  and  Broadway  all  wrong  in  their 
ideas  of  the  essentials  of  life  ?  The  vil- 
lage lawyer  here  had  education,  the 
thousand  decencies  and  tendernesses  of 
home,  the  comfort  of  soberly  courteous 
and  kindly  habits  of  thought  in  those 
about  him,  and,  if  he  chose  it,  of  religion. 
Nature  in  her  loftiest  mood  was  ready  to 
be  his  companion.  If  the  externals  of 
his  life  did  lack  certain  refinements  and 
possibilities,  certainly  there  was  utterly 
dropped  out  of  that  life  all  the  hurry  and 
anxious  gnawing  care  which  have  made 
the  men  of  the  Northern  States  lean  of 
body  and  morbid  of  mind,  and  the 
women  neuralgic  and  ill-tempered.  In 
the  drowsy  content  of  this  atmosphere, 
looking  from  some  stupendous  height 
off  into  infinite  repose,  doubts  would 
creep, in  as  to  the  use  of  work  and  wor- 
ry, and  the  actual  value  of  government 
bonds  or  bric-a-brac  or  Meissonnier's 
pictures,  and  whether  it  really  "paid" 
to  toil  a  life  long  to  secure  such  goods  a 
little  in  advance  of  our  neighbor.  The 
eternal  calm  of  the  mountains  reflected 
itself  in  the  lowest  nature  in  some  queer, 
incomplete  way.  The  shrewdest  busi- 
ness-man of  the  party  lapsed  slowly  into 
flannel  shirts  and  lazy  good-humor,  and 
began  to  take  rain,  heat  or  poor  fare  with 
the  serene  complacency  of  a  native.  If 
he  wished  now  and  then  for  a  lodge  in 
some  wilderness  which  we  passed,  he  for- 
got to  remark  how  long  the  investment 
would  be  in  paying  two  per  cent.  He 
had  begun  the  journey  with  harangues 
at  every  stopping-place  upon  the  effect 
of  a  railroad  and  the  influx  of  Northern 
capital  in  opening  up  this  region.  Now 
he  gravely  assured  us  that  manufactures 
and  money  could  be  found  anywhere, 
but  that  there  was  something  beneath 
this  solitude  and  laziness  and  happy  in- 
difference worth  them  all.  When  these 
stately  mountain -monarchs  should  be 
bored  and  tunneled  and  cut  up  by  Nov- 


578 


QUALLA. 


[Nov. 


elty  mica-mines  and  iron-furnaces  work- 
ed by  New  York  capitalists,  he  hinted 
that  a  good  beyond  their  money  value 
would  be  lost  to  the  country.  However, 
I  am  afraid  that  almost  any  of  the  citizens 
of  Buncombe  county  would  be  willing 
to  trade  their  spiritual,  intangible  pos- 
sessions for  a  few  greenbacks  paid  quar- 
terly. 

We  all  attempted,  of  course,  plenty  of 
scientific  guesses  as  to  the  cause  of  this 
universal  drowse  over  men  and  matter — 
why  the  poorest  Buncombe  natives,  more 
than  any  other  barefooted,  snuff-rubbing 
race,  should  "lie  reclined  on  the  hills 
like  gods  together,  careless  of  mankind." 
We  talked  of  the  effect  upon  the  nervous 
centres  of  the  rarity  of  the  atmosphere 
at  that  elevation,  and  upon  the  lungs  of 
the  air-tonics  from  vast  bodies  of  balsam 
forests.  But  whatever  the  explanation, 
the  fact  was  apparent.  The  brain  and 
nervous  system  were  refreshed  and  re- 
stored in  that  atmosphere  as  by  prolong- 
ed physical  sleep.  There  is  not  one  of 
us  who  will  not  remember  that  journey 
as  an  actual  lapse  out  of  the  nervous 
strain,  the  bodily  daily  sense  of  wear 
and  exhaustion,  which  belongs  to  middle 
age,  back  into  some  sleepy,  sunny,  well- 
fed  holiday  of  youth. 

It  was  toward  the  last  of  July,  when 
we  had  returned  to  our  central  head- 
quarters in  the  village  of  Asheville,  that 
we  bethought  ourselves  of  Oualla.  It 
was  difficult  to  gain  any  definite  infor- 
mation about  it.  The  blessed  quality  in 
our  new  friends  of  indifferent  calm  be- 
came rather  exasperating  when  we  set 
out  for  information. 

"  Oualla  was  a  little  Indian  village.  It 
might  be  worth  our  while  to  ride  up  thar, 
provided  Colonel  Thomas,  who  was  their 
chief,  could  git  up  a  torchlight  dance  for 
us.  The  Indians  were  quite  savage,  still 
worshiped  their  old  fetiches,"  our  in- 
formant believed.  He  himself  "had 
never  been  to  Oualla.  It  was  about  a 
hundred  miles  off,  in  a  gorge  of  the 
Oconalufta.  Why  on  earth  should  he 
go  there  ?" 

"Oualla,"  another  Confederate  ex- 
colonel  stated,  "was  not  a  village  at  all. 
It   included  the  counties  of  Cherokee, 


Jackson  and  Swayne,  and  was  inhabited 
solely  by  a  body  of  Cherokee  Indians, 
the  largest  remnant  of  an  original  tribe 
east  of  the  Mississippi.  They  had  their 
own  government,  he  thought.  Could  not 
tell  whether  they  were  heathens  or  Chris- 
tians. Little  matter  when  you  came  to 
red-skins,  anyhow.  If  we  waited  long 
enough,  we  might  see  some  of  the  dirty 
devils  down  in  town.  They  came  oc- 
casionally to  trade.  Did  not  drink.  Had 
some  vow  against  liquor,  he  had  heard. 
Had  never  been  up  in  the  nation  :  what 
could  take  anybody  to  Oualla  ?" 

Various  scraps  of  information  were 
offered  on  other  sides.  The  Indians 
were  half  starving  ;  somebody  had  gob- 
bled up  their  appropriation  from  Con- 
gress years  ago  :  they  never  had  had  an 
appropriation ;  Colonel  Thomas  was  a 
white  man  who  had  governed  them  au- 
tocratically for  twenty  years.  The  na- 
tion was  Christian,  and  in  a  condition 
of  peace  and  prosperity,  with  him  at  its 
head  :  the  nation  was  heathen,  living  in 
polygamy  and  unbridled  revolt,  and  Col- 
onel Thomas  was  a  maniac  chained  to 
the  floor.  The  road  to  Qualla  was  a  safe 
and  good  one  :  the  road  was  utterly  im- 
practicable even  for  the  mountain-mules. 
But  nobody  had  ever  seen  Qualla  itself, 
and  nobody  had  ever  wanted  to  see  it. 
On  that  one  point  all  were  agreed.  The 
educated  western  North  Carolinian,  when 
he  leaves  his  own  village,  turns  his  face 
straight  toward  Richmond  or  Philadel- 
phia :  he  can  give  you  the  dimensions 
of  the  Walnut  Street  Theatre  better  than 
those  of  the  Dry  Falls,  and  would  rather 
look  at  the  pretty  girls  in  the  paths  about 
the  old  Confederate  capitol  than  climb 
to  the  dizzy  peak  where  Mitchell's  grave 
was  made  high  above  the  clouds.  Wliy 
any  man,  much  less  woman,  should  turn 
his  or  her  back  on  metropolitan  delights 
to  climb  slippery  precipices  or  unearth 
a  forgotten  tribe  of  Indians  could  be 
explained  only  by  the  natural  perverse 
cussedness  of  the  Northern  mind. 

We  made  the  journey  slowly,  with  the 
keen  enjoyment  of  discoverers  of  soli- 
tudes which  had  never  been  trodden  by 
foot  of  summer  tourist — of  ravines  where 
no  artist  with  camp-stool   and  yellow 


I87S-] 


QUALLA. 


579 


umbrella  could  venture  for  "eftects," 
and  heights  to  which  even  "  Hollovvay's 
Pills"  had  not  reached.  So  utterly  re- 
moved is  the  mode  of  life  of  the  in- 
habitants of  these  counties  from  that  of 
modern  civilization  that  one  or  two  cen- 
turies seemed  to  bar  us  out  from  the 
world  we  had  left  behind.  Character, 
too,  develops  unchecked  to  its  natural 
limits  in  this  solitude,  into  all  kinds  of 
eccentric  form  and  expression.  Every 
man  or  woman  who  drove  us  or  watered 
the  mules  or  cooked  a  meal's  victuals 
for  us  was  a  type  of  some  od-d  genus  of 
human  nature,  which,  like  the  mountain- 
cedars  about  us,  had  knotted  and  gnarl- 
ed and  rooted  itself  at  pleasure.  On  the 
farms  the  woman  worked  and  took  rank 
with  the  negroes,  but  in  the  little  ham- 
lets, as  soon  as  society  became  an  ele- 
ment of  daily  life,  the  chivalric  Southern 
deference  to  her  had  crept  in  and  show- 
ed itself  in  the  oddest  and  most  unex- 
pected ways.  Chief  among  these  was 
the  content  with  which  men,  cleanly 
enough  themselves,  invariably  regarded 
any  excess  of  idleness  and  squalor  in 
their  households,  never  by  any  chance 
calling  the  women  to  account  for  it.  On 
a  journey,  too,  the  father  and  inevitable 
half-grown  black  nurse  took  charge  of 
the  baby  and  the  ten  other  fractious  chil- 
dren (for  there  were  always  eleven),  \vhile 
the  mother  lay  back  dozing  or  reading  a 
novel.  The  universal  feeling  appeared 
to  be  that  when  she  had  brought  forth 
these  helps-'io  the  state  she  had  wholly 
fulfilled  the  chief  end  of  woman.  I  re- 
member the  wretched,  flea-infested  little 
inn  of  Webster,  a  village  of  some  twenty 
houses  perched  on  the  edge  of  a  cliff, 
where  the  postmaster,  judge  and  other 
dignitaries  boarded.  Street -mud  and 
other  abominations  lay  inch -deep  on 
the  dining-room  floor,  which  was  hard- 
ly more  filthy  than  the  children  playing 
in  it  or  than  the  messes  on  the  table. 
One  forlorn  negro  was  housekeeper,  cook, 
hostler  and  nurse-maid,  while  the  land- 
lady, a  jaunty  black-eyed  woman,  wa- 
tered her  verbenas  or  lay  on  the  sofa,  a 
pink  knot  of  ribbon  in  her  hair,  reading 
Waverley.  The  nausea  of  the  men  as 
they  gulped  down  the  compounds  of  fat 


pork  and  molasses,  and  the  tender  gal- 
lantry with  which  they  stopped  to  pay 
their  respects  to  the  hostess  as  to  a  dame 
of  high  degree,  were  significant  sights  to 
see,  and  impossible  in  a  Northern  State. 
With  us,  even  the  dame  of  high  degree 
is  not  often  allowed  to  live  like  the  lily 
and  the  rose,  and  assuredly  human  lilies 
and  roses  meet  but  small  favor  as  keep- 
ers of  boarding-houses. 

On  our  way  to  Oualla,  however,  we 
discovered  "  Smather's  "  in  Waynesville, 
the  cleanest  and  most  picturesque  of  lit- 
tle mountain-inns,  perched  nearly  three 
thousand  feet  above  tide-level.  From 
its  shady  porches  you  look  down  on  the 
clouds  in  the  valley  below  or  watch  the 
gray  mist  rising  up  the  sides  of  the  Great 
Balsam  range,  whose  peaks,  clad  in  fu- 
nereal black,  encircle  the  sleepy  little  vil- 
lage ;  or,  very  likely,  you  think  of  noth- 
ing but  the  savory  whiffs  from  within  of 
delicious  fried  chicken,  coffee,  and  hot 
biscuits  light  and  white  as  snowflakes, 
for  which  the  keen  cold  wind  teaches 
you  how  to  be  grateful. 

The  story  of  a  mysterious  murder,  the 
first  in  the  mountain-region  for  five  years, 
flitted  before  us  in  our  journey  like  an 
uneasy  ghost,  taking  new  shape  in  every 
hamlet  or  lonely  farmhouse.  The  mur- 
derer, a  youth  of  nineteen,  was  arrest- 
ed and  put  literally  into  chains  in  the 
Asheville  jail.  Such  was  the  horror  and 
consternation  which  the  crime  carried  to 
these  kindly  mountain-folks  that  they 
were  anxious  to  prove  that  he  had  been 
guilty  of  the  last  murder  for  years  back, 
although  he  was  then  but  a  boy. 

"  For  it  don't  stand  to  reason,"  said  one 
old  man,  arguing  the  matter,  "that  God 
'ud  make  two  such  fiends  as  that  thar 
in  one  generation." 

Indeed,  the  farther  we  penetrated  to 
the  recesses  of  these  mountain-wilder- 
nesses the  more  we  were  impressed  with 
the  honesty,  the  kindly  humanity,  the 
sound  sterling  virtue  in  their  inhabitants 
— a  fact  which  made  the  discovery  that 
awaited  us  at  the  end  more  startling  and 
inexplicable. 

We  found  the  road  to  Qualla  little 
traveled  and  scarcely  practicable — a  slip- 
pery cartway  cut  halfway  up  the  preci- 


58o 


QUALLA. 


[Nov. 


pice,  and  never  repaired  since  it  was 
built.  Captain  E ,  a  shrewd,  intel- 
ligent man,  who  guided  us  there  from 
Webster,  had  been  its  engineer  and 
builder,  as  he  told  us.  But  "  there  was 
nobody  to  look  after  it,  and  it  had  gone  to 
ruin."  He  pointed  out  a  deserted  mica- 
mine,  which  "nobody  had  cared  to  go 
on  with  ;"  a  saw-mill  which  he  had  start- 
ed on  the  banks  of  the  creek,  but  which 
"  nobody  wanted."  We  passed  through 
the  day  vacant  huts,  follen  to  the  ground 
and  overgrown  with  moss  and  rank  par- 
asites, which  gave  an  aspect  of  dreary 
desolation  to  the  tropical  luxuriance  of 
the  landscape.  White  men  apparently 
had  failed  in  gaining  here  even  the  little 
which  they  required  to  live.  "Yet  the 
soil  is  black  with  richness,"  said  Captain 

E ,  "and  the  mountains  are  full  of 

marble  and  iron  and  copper,  and,  they 
do  say,  gold.  But  they  are  too  lazy  to 
even  lay  a  log  toward  the  mending  of 
this  road.  They'd  rather  run  the  risk 
of  rolling  down  into  the  river,  wagon, 
steers  and  all,  as  some  of  them  do  ev- 
ery winter."  Interest  in  the  journey  was 
kept  at  fever-heat  by  the  momentary  ex- 
pectation that  our  own  cart  would  follow 
the  usual  course  over  some  of  the  dizzy 
heights  where  the  road  had  frequently 
been  washed  away,  until,  as  one  wheel 
grated  against  the  cliff,  the  edge  of  the 
other  hung  over  a  sheer  precipice  of  hun- 
dreds of  feet. 

The  day  was  gray,  with  a  strong  chilly 
wind  blowing,  sudden  gusts  of  rain  blot- 
ting out  the  mountains  as  the  clouds  were 
driven  against  the  higher  peaks.  When 
the  rain-veil  lifted,  the  unbroken  forests 
were  left  no  less  sombre  in  tone  and 
meaning.  The  sides  of  this  range  were 
clothed  in  hemlocks  and  oaks,  with  a 
thick  undergrowth  of  laurel  and  rowan  ; 
the  scarlet  rhododendron  flamed  in  every 
dark  recess ;  rank  vines  crept  over  the 
ground  and  matted  the  trees  into  im- 
penetrable walls  of  green,  and  enormous 
bare  gray  trunks  were  writhed  and  twist- 
ed like  Dore's  trees  overlooking  hell,  so 
that  one  could  not  put  away  the  idea 
of  a  dumb  agony  of  pain.  The  upper 
peaks  were  clothed  with  the  balsam, 
whose  black  trunk  and  sombre  foliage 


made  them  appear  through  the  mist  as 
though  wrapped  in  funereal  mantles.  This 
loneliest  of  trees  will  live  only  in  the  soli- 
tude of  heights  which  rise  over  four  thou- 
sand feet.  Owing  to  the  cold,  no  ordi- 
nary singing-birds,  nor  the  moccasin  and 
rattlesnakes  which  infest  the  villages,  are 
ever  found  where  it  grows.  The  bleak 
winds  of  winter  are  sometimes  more  than 
even  the  tree  itself  can  bear,  and  great 
masses  of  dead  trunks  crowd  the  sum- 
mits, tossing  their  bare  branches  against 
the  sky  like  a  procession  of  ghosts  going 
down  into  Hades. 

In  fact,  the  melancholy  sky,  the  mag- 
nitude and  utter  solitude  of  the  moun- 
tains, were  so  oppressive  on  the  day  of 
our  entrance  into  Oualla  that  it  seeined  as 
though  we  too  might  be  going  down  into 
a  place  of  departed  spirits.  We  were 
speedily  disabused  of  any  such  fantastic 
impression  by  the  gentleman  who  had 
taken  charge  of  the  party.  Oualla,  ac- 
cording to  his  brisk  little  anecdotes,  was 
an  El  Dorado,  a  Happy  Valley,  created 
and  generously  given  over  by  a  single 
white  man  to  the  Cherokees,  where  the 
red  men  under  his  guidance  had  reach- 
ed the  highest  point  in  civilization  ever 
attained  by  any  of  their  color.  Nothing 
could  be  more  cheery  or  kindlier  than 
the  talk  of  this  merry  little  Irishman,  who 
"  had  lived  with  the  nation  since  his  child- 
hood as  a  brother."  They  called  him 
Tallalla  ("red  woodpecker"),  he  lold 
us,  "from  the  color  of  his  hair.  He  had 
been  a  deputy  ruler  over  them  under 
Colonel  Thomas,  and  had  carried  out 
the  plans  of  that  great  and  good  man  for 
their  benefit  faithfully."  He  then  pro- 
ceeded to  give  us  a  sketch  of  the  singular 
career  of  this  unknown  reformer,  rejoiced, 
as  he  said,  that  there  was  now  a  chance 
that  it  should  be  made  known  to  the 
Northern  people.  His  statement  in  brief 
was  this: 

By  the  treaties  of  1817,  1819  and  1S36 
the  United  States  acquired  from  the  Cher- 
okees a  large  territory  lying  west  of  the 
Pigeon  River  in  North  Carolina,  and  cast 
of  the  Holston  and  French  Broad  in 
Tennessee,  also  certain  lands,  known  as 
the  "New  Purchase,"  of  Georgia  and 
Alabama,  giving  them  lands  west  of  the 


I875-] 


QUALLA. 


SSi 


Mississippi  in  lieu,  and  requiring  them  to 
remove  thereto.  But  the  North  Caro- 
lina Indians,  under  their  chief  Yonagus- 
ka,  claimed  that  they  were  not  represent- 
ed in  the  treaties,  and  were  permitted  to 
remain.  There  were  about  one  thousand 
of  these  people  in  the  mountain-region 
called  Qualla.  Yonaguska  had  adopted 
a  white  lad,  who  when  grown  to  man- 
hood became  the  medium  of  communi- 
cation between  the  Indians  and  the  world 
without.  He  carried  on  all  trade  for  them, 
and  assisted  the  chief  in  administering 
the  government  of  the  tribe.  When 
Yonaguska  came  to  die,  our  enthusiastic 
chronicler  proceeded  to  state,  he  formal- 
ly constituted  this  adopted  son  (Colonel 
Thomas)  chief  of  the  tribe,  which  received 
him  with  joy,  and  from  that  day  to  the 
present  had  trusted  him  as  a  wise  father. 
The  new  chief  was  born  a  hero  and  re- 
former in  the  grain.  He  carried  the 
tribe  in  his  heart,  as  though  they  were 
indeed  his  children  :  his  one  aim  and 
thought  in  life  was  to  civilize  and  Chris- 
tianize them.  His  power  over  them  was 
absolute  :  he  punished,  rewarded,  mar- 
ried ;  controlled  the  economy  of  each 
family  according  to  his  own  individual 
will.  The  good  accomplished  was  almost 
incredible,  continued  Tallalla.  "The 
Oualla  Indians  were  Christians,  and  in- 
dustrious farmers  :  every  member  of  the 
tribe  was  compelled  by  Colonel  Thomas 
to  sign  a  temperance  pledge  and  to  ad- 
here to  it  strictly.  For  thirty  years  this 
philanthropfst  had  fed  and  clothed  the 
whole  tribe  at  his  own  expense — carried 
the  burden  of  their  souls  and  bodies,  in 
fact,  until  his  mind  gave  way  under  the 
weight,  and  he  was  now  hopelessly  in- 
sane." 

This  narration  touched  every  hearer  but 
one,  who  inquired,  "How  did  Colonel 
Thomas  meet  the  expenses?  I  thought 
you  stated  he  was  a  penniless  boy." 

"Speculation  —  speculation  in  land," 
said  Tallalla  airily.  "  He  not  only  open- 
ed a  store,  out  of  which  he  supplied  all 
their  needs  gratuitously,  but  purchased 
for  them  the  region  of  Oualla,  some  hun- 
dred thousand  acres  on  the  Oconalufta 
and  Tuckaseege  rivers,  and  on  Soco 
Creek." 


"The  support  of  a  thousand  people  for 
thirty  years  is  a  load  for  one  of  the  old 
genii,"  suggested  the  doubting  Thomas 
in  the  back  of  the  cart.  "This  is  a  story 
for  Scheherazade." 

"And  when  he  was  no  longer  able  to 
take  charge  of  them,  I  tried  to  carry  out 
his  plans,"  continued  the  historian.  "And 
even  now,  in  his  wildest  ravings,  it  is  not 
wife  and  children  that  rest  upon  his  mind, 
but  the  Indians.  '  What  is  to  become  of 
my  people  ? — my  people  ?'  he  cries  in- 
cessantly." 

At  this  moment  we  drove  down  a  de- 
file and  stopped  at  the  house  of  the  only 
white  farmer  in  Oualla,  of  which  we  made 
a  sort  of  head-quarters  during  our  stay. 
House  and  family  were  fairly  typical  of 

Western  North  Carolina.    Colonel  P 

(there  were  apparently  no  privates  in  the 
Confederate  army)  is  a  leading  man  in 
these  counties — a  wealthy  man  as  wealth 
is  counted  down  there.  In  the  North  his 
wife  would  not  have  lost  her  bloom  at 
forty,  and  would  set  the  fashion  in  her 
county  in  the  make  of  her  gros  d'Afrique 
and  point  collar  ;  his  sons  would  "finish" 
in  Heidelberg.  Colonel  P 's  man- 
sion is  a  huddle  of  log-built  rooms,  chunk- 
ed with  mud,  squatted  in  the  middle  of 
cornfields  which  his  wife  has  helped  to 
plough.  She  weaves  on  a  heavy  home- 
made loom  the  clothes  of  the  household, 
waits  on  her  husband  and  sons  at  table, 
and  eats  herself  with  the  servants,  white 
and  black.  She  is  a  shrewd,  clean-mind- 
ed, just  woman,  bony  and  gray-haired, 
dressed,  like  her  cook,  in  brown  linsey, 
with  a  yellow  handkerchief  knotted  about 
her  neck  Her  comfortless  house  was  as 
clean  as  a  Shaker's,  and  her  table  boun- 
tifully spread.  Her  welcome  of  Tallalla 
was  not  cordial,  we  observed,  and  she 
listened  eagerly  to  his  account  of  the 
Arcadia  of  the  red-skins  which  we  were 
to  explore  to-morrow.  It  was  not  the 
custom  here  for  wives  to  join  in  the  con- 
versation of  their  husbands  and  other 
men.  But  presently  two  or  three  half- 
naked  Indians  came  down  the  mountain 
with  coarse  baskets  to  trade  for  a  bit  of 

pork.     Mrs.  P gave  them  the  bacon. 

"They  are  almost  starving,"  she  said  to 
me  quietly,  "and  so  is  the  whole  nation. 


582 


QUALLA. 


[Nov. 


Oualla  was  paid  for  with  their  own  mon- 
ey, and  they  do  not  own  an  acre  of  it.  I 
have  seen  over  ninety  thousand  dollars 
in  gold  paid  into  their  hands  in  this  very 
kitchen,  and  before  they  left  the  house 
there  were  not  thirty  dollars  to  divide 
among  them." 

"Who  had  taken  it?" 

She  shut  her  thin  lips :  "  It  is  not  my 
business  to  make  charges.  As  for  their 
civilization,  they  lived  in  open  polygamy 
before  the  war.  That  did  not  aggrieve 
Colonel  Thomas's  conscience.  When 
the  law  passed  enforcing  marriage  among 
the  slaves,  the  Indians  were  brought  in 
by  scores  to  be  legally  married.  But  it 
is  all  the  same  :  when  a  young  fellow 
tires  now  of  his  wife,  he  puts  her  out  of 
his  hut  and  takes  another,  and  nobody 
thinks  any  the  worse  of  either  of  them." 

About  a  hundred  rods  from  the  house 
there  was  a  small  wooden  building,  the 
porch  of  which  was  piled  with  empty 
boxes  and  the  windows  hung  with  cheap 
calicoes,  beads,  tin  dippers  and  hoop- 
skirts.  It  was  proudly  pointed  out  by 
Tallalla  —  who,  it  now  appeared,  had 
been  a  boy  employed  in  the  shop — as 
the  scene  of  Colonel  Thomas's  business 
transactions. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say,"  queried  the 
skeptic  of  the  travelers,  "that  the  keep- 
er of  that  country  store  ruled  over  a  thou- 
sand people  from  behind  his  counter  ?" 

"Absolutely,"  replied  Tallalla ;  and  the 
farmer  confirmed  him  in  the  assertion. 
•  "And  that  from  the  profits  of  that  mis- 
erable little  shop  he  clothed  and  fed  them 
for  thirty  years,  and  bought  the  land  of 
three  counties  ?" 

"The  profits  were  larger  than  in  ordi- 
nary trade,"  stammered  Tallalla.  "We 
always  expected  to  make  one  hundred 
or  a  hundred  and  fifty  per  cent,  on  every 
sale." 

"Who  were  your  customers?" 

"The  Indians,  necessarily." 

"Oh!" 

The  water  was  growing  too  muddy  for 
further  fording. 

But  I  may  as  well  state  here  the  re- 
sults of  our  inquiries  made  into  this  mat- 
ter on  our  return  to  Asheville.  It  was 
true  that  the  tribe    (estimated  at  from 


thirteen  hundred  to  fourteen  hundred  in 
1870)  had  for  a  whole  generation  fallen 
under  the  absolute  control  of  this  store- 
keeper, Thomas.  Dr.  Francia  exercised 
no  more  unlicensed  dictatorship  over  the 
half-breeds  of  Paraguay  than  did  this 
man  over  the  credulous,  trusting  savages. 
They  were,  and  are,  as  a  rule,  unable  to 
speak  any  tongue  but  their  own  ;  they 
are  barred  by  the  mountains  into  their 
wilderness  ;  the  surrounding  white  popu- 
lation is  one  which  scarcely  knows  that 
they  exist — a  population  which  meets 
known  facts  with  exceptional  apathy,  as 
we  have  seen.  Until  within  the  last  two 
years  Western  North  Carolina,  with  its 
white  and  red  inhabitants,  was  an  almost 
unknown  region  to  the  rest  of  the  coun- 
try. Indians  in  the  West  are  subjected 
to  the  friction  and  the  observation  of 
the  encroaching,  pushing,  trading  white 
race  :  this  fragment  of  a  tribe  was  left  in 
their  untraveled  hills  to  the  sole  manip- 
ulation of  one  man.  He  had  apparent- 
ly kindly  instincts,  and  certain  very  mod- 
erate ideas  of  morality,  and  brought  his 
subjects  very  fairly  up  to  the  standard 
which  these  gave  him.  They  were  urged 
to  cultivate  their  land,  to  deal  justly  with 
each  other:  liquor  was  forbidden.  He 
was  their  judge,  business-agent,  pastor 
and  master :  he  furnished  them  with 
clothes,  etc.,  through  the  store,  charged 
them  his  own  price,  received  in  pay- 
ment the  appropriations  made  to  them 
by  Congress  before  the  war,  and  pur- 
chased Oualla  with  them,  besides  iso- 
lated farms  for  which  individual  Indians 
paid  him  their  own  earnings.  The  titles 
to  all  these  purchases  were  made  out  in 
his  own  name  ;  and  a  few  inonths  be- 
fore our  arrival  every  foot  of  the  Qualla 
lands,  the  ground  on  which  this  tribe  had 
lived  during  the  memory  of  men,  and  for 
which  their  money  had  been  paid,  was 
sold  under  the  hammer  to  satisfy  his 
creditors.  The  Indians  had  brought 
suit  for  its  recovery,  and  our  enthusiastic 
guide,  who  "had  been  loved  as  a  broth- 
er by  them,"  was  one  of  the  parties 
against  whom  they  brought  it. 

Now,  this  story,  of  which  we  will  not 
hint  the  miserable  details,  may  seem 
incompatible  with  the  "kindly  instincts 


1875.] 


QUALLA. 


5S3 


and  morality"  for  which  we  gave  their 
dictator  credit.  But  the  burglar  may  be 
a  most  affectionate  son  and  brother  ;  the 
Greek  brigands  patter  their  paternosters 
at  night  devoutly  before  they  put  a  bul- 
let through  the  heads  of  their  captives 
who  do  not  pay  their  ransom  ;  and  the 
men  who  have  made  the  name  of  Indian 
agents  and  commissioners  synonymous 
with  "thief"  among  us  have  been,  no 
doubt,  often  church  members  and  agree- 
able, genial  fellows  in  their  way.  Tal- 
lalla  perhaps  furnished  the  key  to  the 
riddle  to  such  conduct  when  he  declared 
that  "the  negro  was  a  domestic  animal, 
and  the  Indian  a  savage  animal,  and 
that  the  man  who  dealt  with  them  as 
human  beings  was  a  fool,  and  would 
reap  his  folly  for  his  pains."  The  creed 
is  an  accepted  one  in  this  country. 

We  penetrated  Qualla  on  mules.  It 
was  a  succession  of  ravines — well  wa- 
tered, the  soil  rich  and  black  with  veg- 
etable mould — and  of  high  wooded  hills. 
Ten  thousand  acres,  we  were  told,  were 
under  actual  cultivation  by  the  Indians, 
but  J  suspect  the  amount  to  be  large- 
ly overstated.  The  old  savage  instinct 
prompted  them  to  conceal  their  huts 
back  in  the  densest  thickets,  avoiding 
sunny  wholesome  exposures  :  even  the 
little  cornfields  were  hidden  in  the  heart 
of  the  forest.  Without  a  guide  we  might 
have  ridden  for  days  through  Oualla  and 
fancied  we  were  the  first  to  penetrate  an 
unbroken  wilderness. 

We  fouTid  the  men  always  at  work, 
busily  hoeing  their  corn,  although  they 
knew  that  the  chances  were  that  in  a 
few  weeks  they  would  be  driven  from 
the  land,  left  beggared  in  a  world  of 
which  they  knew  nothing.  The  first  hut 
we  entered  was  a  fair  type  of  the  ma- 
jority of  them.  There  was  but  the  one 
little  room,  without  any  window  :  the 
grass  actually  grew  in  the  heaps  of  dirt 
on  the  floor.  A  stool,  a  bedstead  with 
some  straw  on  it,  and  an  iron  pot  were 
the  only  plenishing.  The  man  of  the 
house,  a  young  fellow  of  twenty,  lay  on 
the  floor  wrapped  in  a  blanket,  sick  with 
some  lingering  fever  :  his  wife  sat  on  the 
stool  staring  drowsily  into  the  fireplace, 
where  a  log  smouldered  on  the  hearth. 


while  two  or  three  dirty,  naked  children 
scrambled  about  her.  Her  hands  and 
feet  were  finely  shaped,  as  are  those  of 
most  Indians:  her  coarse,  glossy  black 
hair  hung  straight  down  her  back.  She 
turned  shy  gentle  eyes  toward  us,  follow- 
ed by  a  frightened  glance  at  the  forest, 
as  though  she  would  have  hid  herself 
there  if  she  could.  It  was  not  the  terror 
of  a  savage  animal,  as  Tallalla  and  his 
like  rank  her:  she  was  a  clean-minded, 
womanly  woman — without  ideas,  prob- 
ably, but  whose  fault  was  that  ?  There 
was  in  her  face,  and  in  the  face  of  every 
Indian  but  one  whom  we  saw  in  Qualla, 
that  heavy,  hopeless  sadness  which  be- 
longs to  races  to  whom  God  has  given 
a  brain  for  which  the  world  has  as  yet 
found  no  use  ;  the  appeal  of  which  is  no 
less  forcible  because  it  intends  no  ap- 
peal. In  the  corner  stood  a  blow-gun, 
the  only  weapon  belonging  to  Oo-tlan- 
o'-teh,  the  sick  man.  It  was  a  long  hol- 
low pipe,  out  of  which  an  arrow  feathered 
with  closely- wrapped  thistle-down  was 
blown  with  skill  and  force  enough  to 
bring  down  squirrels  and  birds  from  the 
highest  trees.  In  the  ashes  was  the  wo- 
man's (Llan-zi's)  sole  household  prop- 
erty, the  pot  in  which  she  had  mixed  the 
corn  and  beans  early  in  the  morning, 
leaving  them  to  simmer  :  when  they  were 
cooked  the  whole  family  would  squat 
about  the  pot,  eating  with  wooden  ladles. 
As  we  turned  to  go  Llan-zi  conquered 
her  terror  enough  to  thrust  forward  her 
baby  for  admiration,  with  a  shy  proud 
smile. 

The  majority  of  the  huts  which  we 
discovered  were  as  miserable  as  this,  and 
their  owners  as  poor  and  ignorant  as 
Llan-zi  and  her  husband  :  but  the  faces 
of  these  people,  I  am  bound  to  confess, 
were  of  a  far  higher  type  than  those  of 
the  same  class  of  whites,  American,  Eng- 
lish or  Irish,  would  have  been  in  a  like 
condition.  They  were  neither  vicious 
nor  vulgar  in  a  single  instance.  On  the 
contrary,  they  were  grave,  thoughtful, 
self  possessed :  the  vacancy  in  the  face 
arose  from  lack  of  subjects  for  thought, 
not  of  the  ability  to  think.  We  visited, 
however,  several  huts  belonging  to  In- 
dians who  could  read  and  write  in  Cher- 


5S4 


QUALLA. 


[Nov. 


okee,  and  even  that  small  degree  of  edu- 
cation told  in  'clean  floors  and  neat  flan- 
nel dresses  ;  the  iron  pot  and  wooden 
spoons  were  still  the  table  furniture,  but 
a  little  shelf  on  the  wall  with  half  a 
dozen  cups  and  saucers  of  white  stone- 
ware, kept  for  show  in  beautiful  glisten- 
ing condition,  hinted  at  a  latent  eesthetic 
taste,  just  as  plainly  as  would  Indian  cab- 
inets laden  with  priceless  bric-a-brac  else- 
where. Packed  away  in  these  huts  were 
always  dress-suits  of  cloth  and  bright 
woolen  stuffs  for  state  occasions,  includ- 
ing always  a  high  hat  for  the  men  and 
hoop-skirts  for  the  women. 

We  found  Sowenosgeh,  head-chief  of 
the  Cherokee  nation,  as  he  signed  him- 
self, neither  drunk  nor  meditating  on  the 
past  glories  of  his  race,  according  to  our 
usual  notions  of  a  chief,  but  barefooted 
and  clad  in  patched  trousers,  hard  at 
work  digging,  as  were  his  two  sons.  He 
was  a  short,  powerfully-built  old  man, 
with  a  keen  shrewd  eye,  which  instantly 
measured  his  guests  and  held  them  at 
pi'oper  distance  from  himself.  The  hut 
was  very  squalid,  although  Sowenosgeh 
had,  we  were  told,  laid  by  a  comfortable 
sum  in  gold,  having  no  trust  in  green- 
backs. His  wife  was  the  daughter  of 
the  great  Yonaguska,  the  last  of  a  long 
line  of  chiefs.  She  was  nearly  eighty, 
and  very  dirty,  but  her  features  were  fine  : 
her  long  white  hair  hung  over  her  shoul- 
ders, and  she  carried  herself  about  her 
work  in  the  field  with  a  majestic  air  of 
command  which  any  sovereign  in  courts 
might  envy.  The  consciousness  of  high 
birth  tells,  even  in  a  mud  hut.  She 
brought  seats,  first  for  her  husband  and 
then  for  his  guests,  but  none  for  me, 
I  being  only  a  woman,  like  herself. 
Commeneh,  the  chief's  son,  had  been  an 
officer  in  a  company  of  Indians  which 
was  raised  by  a  Captain  Terrel  and  taken 
into  the  Confederate  service.  The  old 
chief  drilled  the  young  men  in  the  war- 
dance  and  the  old  savage  religious  rites 
before  they  left.  They  "  fought  with 
great  bravery,"  Captain  Terrel  informed 
us;  "but,  although  they  were  all  nom- 
inally Christians,  and  although  one  hun- 
dred years  certainly  had  passed  since 
any  of  the  tribe  had  engaged  in  warfare, 


they  could  not  be  restrained  from  scalp- 
ing the  men  they  killed." 

The  whole  of  the  Qualla  Indians  are, 
in  fact,  nominally  Christians.  There  are 
two  little  churches  on  their  land  built 
long  ago  by  themselves.  The  preacher, 
Enola,  or  Black  Fox,  is,  or  was  in  former 
years,  a  member  of  the  Baptist  Associa- 
tion. But  the  same  lethargy  has  crept 
over  their  religion  as  over  the  whole  life 
of  this  forgotten  people.  The  lichen- 
covered  little  church  is  open  sometimes, 
and  Enola  talks  to  a  few  drowsy  old  men 
and  women.  But  when  they  want  divine 
interference  in  their  family  affairs,  or 
would  ensure  rain  or  sunshine  for  their 
corn,  they  go  not  to  God,  but  to  the  con- 
jurer Oosoweh.  We  tried  in  vain  to 
find  this  highest  power  in  the  land.  His 
hut  was  empty,  and  certain  Indians  who 
were  busily  at  work  hoeing  his  corn  told 
us  that  he  had  gone  to  the  mountains  to 
bring  a  rain.  He  usually  finds  such  a 
journey  necessary  at  the  busy  seasons, 
and  leaves  his  disciples  to  hoe  or  plough 
while  he  lies  on  his  face  on  some  moun- 
tain-height, with  all  the  countries  on  earth 
marked  out  on  the  ground  by  pegs.  As 
he  pulls  these  pegs  in  and  out  the  winds 
blow  and  the  clouds  move.  The  preach- 
er Enola,  an  intelligent  old  man  of  sixty, 
lives  in  a  cabin  which  had  a  look  of  com- 
fort and  home  unknown  to  any  other. 
There  were  a  carpet,  beds  and  crockery- 
ware,  and  a  bookcase  full  of  books  in 
English  and  Cherokee  :  outside,  a  snug 
surrounding  of  beehives,  piggery,  ducks, 
etc.  The  old  man,  sharpening  his  saw 
at  a  grindstone  by  the  brook,  put  the 
whole  story  of  Qualla  in  a  few  sharp 
words.  "My  people,"  he  said,  "are  like 
grown-up  children.  They  have  the  bod- 
ies of  men,  but  they  know  nothing  :  they 
have  lived  in  Qualla  since  before  the 
white  men  came  to  the  country,  and 
they  have  not  made  one  quarrel.  Be- 
cause they  are  peaceable  they  are  for- 
gotten. All  that  they  want  of  the  white 
men  is  schools." 

Twice  an  attempt  has  been  made  by 
the  State  government  to  establish  a  school 
for  them  ;  and  in  both  instances  the  In- 
dians welcomed  the  teacher  "as  a  hun- 
gry man  wouldbread,"crossingthemoun- 


I875-] 


QUALLA. 


5S5 


tains  from  the  most  distant  settlements  in 
the  two  counties  to  bring  their  children 
and  go  to  the  school  themselves.  But 
the  lonehness  for  the  white  man  was 
more  than  any  ordinary  teacher  could 
endure,  and  the  schools  were  given  up 
after  a  few  months.  The  hint  that  there 
was  a  chance  that  teachers  would  be 
sent  to  them  roused  even  the  dullest 
of  them  to  breathless  eagerness.  They 
crowded  about  my  mule,  asking  a  hun- 
dred questions,  and  explaining  how  little 
money  it  would  take,  and  how  hard  they 
would  study  to  "  please  the  North."  One 
old  woman,  over  ninety  years  old,  push- 
ed the  others  aside,  and  holding  her 
grandchild  before  her  by  the  shoulders 
spoke  with  such  energy  that  the  inter- 
preter could  hardly  follow  her :  "  Tell 
her  it  is  too  late  for  me.  But  these  chil- 
dren, are  they  to  grow  up  like  dogs  ? 
But  I  don't  want  any  lies.  There  were 
schools  before,  and  I  carried  my  chil- 
dren seven  miles  many  times  in  winter, 
and  found  the  door  locked,  and  the  teach- 
er gone  to  Webster  for  weeks.  He  went 
away  just  when  we  were  beginning  to 
learn,  and  never  came  back.  I  don't 
want  the  North  to  tell  us  any  lies  like 
that." 

The  interpreter,  Wilowisteh,  a  bright- 
faced  lad  of  nineteen,  the  only  man  in 
Qualla  who  m.et  us  with  a  laugh,  heard 
this  talk  of  a  teacher  as  though  it  were 
a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  him.  He 
is  probably  the  most  intelligent  man 
in  the  nation  —  speaks  English  with 
tolerable  fluency,  and  serves  as  a  me- 
dium of  communication  between  his  peo- 
ple and  the  whites  in  all  business  of  the 
■  tribe,  trading,  taking  out  licenses  to  mar- 
ry, etc.  "  Do  you  think  we  must  always 
live  /lerc,"  glancing  about  him  at  the 
wall  of  mountains,  "and  as  we  are?" 
When  he  received  no  answer  he  suggest- 
ed presently  that  a  white  teacher  would 
not  stay  in  Qualla,  but  that  if  one  or  two 
Indians  could  be  taken  North  and  trained 
as  teachers,  they  could  bring  their  people 
up  "to  be  like  the  whites." 

"And  you  would  be  one  of  the  two, 
Wilowisteh  ?"  one  of  the  party  said, 
laughingly. 

But  the  man  did  not  laugh  ;  only  look- 
VoL.  XVI.— 37 


ed  from  one  to  the  other  with  an  eager- 
ness which,  when  one  thinks  of  it,  was  a 
tragic  thing  enough.  He  ran  alongside 
of  the  mules  for  miles,  listening  as  we  dis- 
cussed the  question,  his  face  clouding  over 
when  he  could  not  follow  our  meaning. 

We  dismissed  him  on  the  Soco  River. 
He  drew  a  canoe  out  from  its  hiding- 
place  and  stood  in  it,  guiding  it  with  a 
pole  as  it  floated  down  the  narrow  stream 
between  the  high  hills. 

"  It  is  a  pity  the  lad  could  not  be  taught 
and    made   a    Christian,"   said   Captain 

E .     "Some  rascally  white  man  has 

brought  whisky  up  to  Qualla  this  sum- 
mer, and  Wilowisteh  has  begun  to  drink, 
for  the  lack  of  something  else  to  do." 

We  saw  Llan-zi  again  as  we  passed  her 
hut.  She  had  set  out  the  pot  of  corn  and 
beans,  and  these  had  been  eaten.  Now 
she  had  put  the  pot  in  the  corner,  and 
seated  herself  again  to  stare  drowsily  at 
the  log  in  the  smouldering  ashes.  What 
else  had  she  to  do  ?  To  day,  to-morrow, 
through  all  the  )-ears  to  come  ?  She  is 
a  woman,  with  probably  as  strong  a 
brain  as  any  other,  modest,  with  tender 
feeling  and  womanly  religious  impulses  ; 
yet  she  is  shut  out  from  the  world  of 
knowledge  and  action — left  to  live  like 
an  animal.  Her  people  are  placable,  in- 
dustrious, eager  for  knowledge — not  sav- 
ages, but  men  living  perforce  like  brutes. 

I  honestly  acknowledge  that  my  mo- 
tive in  writing  this  paper  has  been  to  ask 
the  question,  What  can  be  done  in  the 
North  for  Llan-zi  and  her  people  ?  I 
have  tried  to  describe  Qualla  and  the 
neighboring  white  population  precisely 
as  I  saw  them  last  summer,  with  the 
hope  that  I  could  make  clear  the  dif- 
ficulties that  hedge  these  poor  Indians, 
and  convey  to  others  the  pathetic  appeal 
which  they  made  to  me.  Since  I  began 
to  write  these  pages  (May,  1875)  ^  have 
received  news  that  the  suit  which  was 
conducted  in  their  behalf  against  Colonel 
Thomas  and  others  by  Major  Marcus  Er- 
win,  an  eminent  lawyer  of  North  Caro- 
lina and  an  earnest  friend  to  the  Indians, 
has  been  successful.  Their  undoubted 
title  to  the  whole  Qualla  country  has 
been  established  :  fifteen  thousand  dol- 
lars have  been  appropriated  to  the  sur- 


586 


CAMP-FIRE   LYRICS. 


[Nov. 


vey  of  these  lands  by  Congress,  and  the 
tribe  has  been  taken  under  the  direction 
of  the  Commissioner  of  Indian  Affairs. 
Major  Erwin  writes  hopefully  that  it  is 
reported  schools  will  be  established  for 
them  by  the  Commissioner,  and  prob- 
ably a  model  farm. 

We,  who  are  more  conversant  with 
the  management  of  Western  Indians  by 
government  agents,  shall  not  probably  be 
so  sanguine  as  to  these  speedy  beneficial 
results  as  is  the  generous  Carolinian. 
Government  surveys  of  Indian  lands  are 
usually  followed  by  white  squatters  and 
whisky  much  more  promptly  than  by 
schools  or  model  farms. 

Llan-zi  in  her  hut  and  eager,  shrewd 
Wilowisteh  are  ready  for  either. 

What  can  be  done  for  them  ? 

Every  religious  body  in  the  country 
has  sent  teachers  to  the  Western  tribes, 
to  the  farthest  Pacific  coast,  while  this 
remnant  of  Cherokees  has  all  the  while 
been  locked  up  in  the  hills  of  one  of  the 
oldest  States,  perishing  in  our  very  midst 
for  lack  of  knowledge.  When  I  re- 
member the  outlay  of  millions  by  these 
churches  for  the  spread  of  the  gospel  in 
foreign  countries,  I  am  sure  that  the  cry 
of  these  few  women  next  door  to  us  will 
be  heard,  and  that  their  children  will  not 
be  left  "to  die  like  dogs." 

I  am  quite  aware  that  money  for  the 


establishment  of  schools  in  Qualla  could 
easily  be  raised :  the  difficulty  lies  in 
finding  teachers  with  the  proper  quali- 
fications. No  mere  hireling  worker  would 
answer :  there  is  needed  zeal,  the  real 
missionary  spirit,  as  well  as  knowledge. 
I  hear  every  week  of  unmarried  or  child- 
less women,  with  both  culture  and  mon- 
ey, whose  sole  complaint  is  that  there  is 
no  standing-place  in  the  world  in  which 
they  can  use  their  talents.  Let  me  offer 
them,  in  all  sincerity,  the  hut  of  Llan-zi, 
where  she  sits  with  her  dirty  children 
waiting  beside  the  smouldering  fire.  The 
self-immolation  of  such  work  would  be 
as  complete,  and  the  isolation  greater 
than  if  they  sacrificed  their  lives  to  the 
far-off  pagans  of  Japan  or  India.  No 
church,  probably,  would  send  them  off 
with  plaudits  to  their  martyrdom,  nor 
would  they  find  any  romance  of  ancient 
creeds  or  ancient  story  to  gild  the  mud  huts 
and  clay  paths  by  the  narrow  Soco  Creek. 
But  Americans  (outside  of  Indian  rings 
and  government  agents)  are  a  very  sin- 
cere and  humane  people,  and  I  have  great 
faith  that  some  strong  and  kindly  men 
and  women,  reading  these  pages,  may 
suddenly  perceive  that  these  are  their 
own  kinsfolk  needing  their  help,  who 
have  so  long  lived  forgotten  among  the 
mountains  of  Qualla. 

Rebecca  Harding  Davis.  ' 


CAMP-FIRE    LYRICS. 

VII.— SOLITUDE. 

ALONE,  alone  !  no  tread  of  man 
Has  passed  where  now  my  footstep  falls ; 
The  caribou  and  bear  alone 

Pace  undisturbed  these  forest  halls. 


Away  from  man,  remote  from  trade, 

And  all  vile  ways  that  win  the  dollar. 
How  sweet  is  Nature's  lonely  mood  ! 

Ah,  what  is  this  ? — a  paper  collar ! 

Edward  Kearsley. 


FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


